


Nothing More to Say

by Thesherlockholmes



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25827946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thesherlockholmes/pseuds/Thesherlockholmes
Summary: Since the horrid sight, he waltzes on parallel train tracks—the new knowledge and the old memory. The memory he desperately tries to re-enliven, the one he begs himself not to forget, even when he tries, when he wants nothing more than to wipe it entirely from existence.Two men know a fact and will not utter it. That is, until they do.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Nothing More to Say

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WatsonIsTheBeesKnees](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatsonIsTheBeesKnees/gifts).



> A gift for Johnhassherlockedhimselfinthecloset (nice long name, very good) based on the song He Doesn't Know Why by Fleet Foxes. I hope you enjoy this, darling!

_Penniless and tired with your hair grown long  
I was looking at you there and your face looked wrong  
Memory is a fickle siren song  
I didn't understand_

Day in, day out, light extinguished. Somewhere the rest of Moriarty’s agents lay in wait, guns and poisons at the ready. And he? He is hunkering in a seedy hotel in some throw away, run down town in Russia that reeks of civil unrest and is itself so tangible a remnant of the Soviet era he’s unsure the people know a revolution happened. He needs to rest. His body is aching, his mind running through possibilities, yet continually failing him. How many has he caught and killed, thus far? _Killed_. The word sticks in his mouth, dries it, and makes his hands shake. He runs one through his hair. What a sight he is. On, on. Keep going, because… 

_John._

A picture sent to him three months ago shows a man he hardly knows anymore. Did he ever, he wonders? There's a moustache that doesn't suit him and a woman who suits him even less, with a commonplace name and an ordinary existence. Normalcy. Everything John wants and he abhors.

Since the horrid sight, he waltzes on parallel train tracks—the new knowledge and the old memory. The memory he desperately tries to re-enliven, the one he begs himself not to forget, even when he tries, when he wants nothing more than to wipe it entirely from existence. 

John puttering around the flat.

John saving his life.

John.

He aches and his heart clenches and his soul is torn in two.

His John has left him—a fair thing for the uninformed, a travesty to the audience.

_In the gentle light as the morning nears  
You don't say a single word of the last two years   
Where you were or when you reached the frontier   
I didn't understand, no_

He faints upon seeing his old friend’s face. He’s alive. Alive!

And then acting as if it's some grand joke. And then, not.

“John! I’m terribly sorry!” 

There's a hand on his brow; slender, gentle fingers; and when he blinks Sherlock is far closer than he thought, hovering only inches over him, worried and saddened.

“I didn't mean to… John?”

He swallows, trying to find words. His friend… he’s alive. Over and over, the thought runs through his head. There's nothing else to say.

“You’re… alive,” spoken in disbelief, even with the proof inches away and indisputable. This is really Sherlock, no doubt. Not an imagining that slips through his fingers. Not a dream that leaves him when dawn encroaches. Not a memory seconds from slipping away. 

“You’re alive.” Now spoken to himself, of himself. _He_ is alive. The air in his lungs feels different than it has for two years. This is what breathing is—he has been suffocating. 

“I am, John. Not dead.”

_See your rugged hands and a silver knife  
Twenty dollars in your hand that you hold so tight  
All the evidence of your vacant life  
My brother, you were gone_

Mary is discarded, the moustache shaved off, and John is once again in his rightful place. The sounds of tea making come from the kitchen, toast is a sure thing, Sherlock knows. The knowledge would make him smile to himself any other day, but today he is unable to. Today is a test of strength. 

The wounds on his back have not been healing properly. The doctors speak of infections and badly healing stitches. All he knows for sure is _pain_. The hot morning shower is torture and then applying the cream to the lash marks. He’s lucky to be able to reach most of them. Just when he’s distracted by the look of one as he examines them in the mirror—a deep gash from a particularly well wielded knife, the prize from a bar fight in decidedly unneutral territory—the lavatory door opens and John pokes his head in. 

He gets so far as, “I was wond–”, before his sentence is cut off by the horrid sight Sherlock has gone numb to. 

Sherlock turns around, as if hiding his back from John will erase the sight the man has already seen, and sees the crumbling expression—from shock, to horror, to desperate sadness. 

“What in–” 

“It's noth–”

“Did that come from...” John speaks over him, even as his voice grows thick with unshed tears, “Did that happen when you were…”

Sherlock can’t look at him any longer. It’s too painful and he whispers the answer, “Yes.”

“Who did that?”

_Who didn’t?_

John takes in his silence and _knows_.

“That's not all, is it? There are more that have healed over.” Nothing in his words is a question. 

Sherlock nods.

“Oh…” 

And then John is gripping him by his upper arms, pressing his face to his chest, and he feels the wetness on the shorter man’s cheeks. They stay there for minutes in silence, Sherlock only moving to place his hands on John’s hips, in this almost-hug, itself a reminder of the pain and torture that surrounds them. It’s careful, a representation of the glass vase that is their life—fragile and balancing on a dangerous precise.

“I’ll bandage them,” John says after a while, his voice taking on the tone of the war zone medic he once was, sharp and determined. 

Sherlock turns around and hands him the ointment.

_And you will try to do what you did before  
Pull the wool over your eyes for a week or more  
Let your family take you back to your  
Original mind_

  
Their life returns to their version of normal, piece by piece. Sherlock returns to crime scenes and John comes along in his rightful place besides the detective. When he has been brilliant and the killer is caught, they go to eat and John listens as he explains in exacting detail his method of deduction. Notes will be taken later, this is only for them. John is quick with praise and a look of awe and on one such day Sherlock can no longer hold himself back. 

There remains only one spectre hanging over them. Death is ever present, but not immediate, only exciting. Boredom is kept carefully at bay. The only thing left to reckon is _them_. By now they both know, are keenly aware, and yet remain inches away from the edge. Sherlock decides to fall, after all, the man across from him will always catch him.

“John, I love you.”

The man inhales sharply, emotions flickering through his eyes, before he finally lets himself fall, too.

_There's nothing I can do  
There's nothing I can say_

  
It’s a soft kiss, brief and could be chaste, but it isn't. It’s only a prelude, an overture. 

The check is paid and then they are rushing out, John leading now, carrying him safely hand in hand back to Baker Street, back to home.

They say nothing as the flat door is banged open and then shut with the force of John pushing him back against it. Kissing him deeply, reaching into his chest and cradling his heart.

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

There's nothing else to say, words fail beyond those three. This is a fact Sherlock has known for years, knows better and more deeply than John will ever hope to understand. But, then again, his boswell is not to be underestimated. 

The night is lost to love and there's nothing more to say.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments greatly appreciated!


End file.
